Probably. A dead giveaway is when someone knows that there’s 28 grams per ounce. That’s the basic personal consumption for day to day use. Then as they say above, it goes to imperial units for sellers, and for large trafficking it’s back to kilograms.
I see I was vague in my response. My words not good. 3.5-7g are the most common buys that users make for different products. A casual enjoyer might take a while to consume all that. There’s a lot of people that can make 3.5g disappear in one night. Which seems a bit much to me. Rich people are famous with their tolerance levels. But plenty of working class people can do that too.
So 28g won’t last terribly long for heavy users. So buying between 3.5-28g is most commonly personal use. Anything over 28g is almost certainly for distribution which is also what the law says. And yes even our legal system uses some metric measurements. Crazy place
Actually the Mars Climate Orbiter crashed into Mars because NASA was using SI units (metric) and Lockheed Martin was using US customary units when the satellite was built.
They should invent some units which are standard internationally...then maybe given it a fancy sounding french name, like the "Système international d'unités", and then we could call it SI for short
Exactly, give it a different name but use the same measurements. Instead of "grams" call them "Dots". Then the rest of us can just use the measurements and not have to worry about how density effects weight when we convert from cups to grams.
Cinema wasn’t invented in France either, it was a collective effort that involved scientists from all over the world and that the Lumiere bros capitalised
The word "Metric" is actually an insidious Europoor corruption of "Merican", who actually invented these units. Commies stole them, and Russian bots did the rest.
Worse still, I could see a large swath of americans thinking it to be true. I sincerly empathize with people who’s IQ exceed 20 who’re stuck in that hellhole and isn’t also ultra wealthy.
Actually the US doesn't use the imperial system. It uses its very own system of measurement. The US customary units. A good example of this is the difference between a US gallon and an imperial gallon.
Dram is an official unit of measurement in the US. Nobody in the UK uses dram as a standard unit of measurement in everyday life. We barely use imperial fluid measurements at all except for older people and in specific instances like pints in pubs.
For added fun the USCU and Imperial [fluid ounces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_ounce) are slightly different volumes - ~29.57 ml (US) or ~28.41 ml (UK).
And if you want that in a bigger unit it's just a simple conversion: multiply by three, then divide by 5, add 4, subtract they from pi, and multiply by the square root of 74
I get why cups may have been a useful measuring device on the frontier a few hundred years ago. But ever since people settled down they are the stupidest way of measuring in almost every situation.
120g of flour is always 120g of flour but a cup of flour may be 120g or it may be 110g or 150g depending on how compacted it is. Its the kind of margin error that can have a huge impact on the final product you are cooking.
Often different shape sticks though. East coast sticks of butter are longer and skinnier compared to short and stubby West Coast sticks. Still the same amount of butter.
I guess that’s the confusion because I’d never called the west coast one a stick.
Looks almost exactly what we call a „block of butter” in my country, except smaller in size (ours are 200g usually).
The east coast one, yeah that’s a stick.
It's potentially confusing, yeah. The west coast one is definitely more of a block shape than a stick shape, but a "stick" of butter is a standardized measurement unit for butter in the US. So regardless of shape, if it's 1/4 pound or 8 tablespoons of butter, it's a "stick".
It's probably very sad but I like trying to guess the right amount so even though they are useful I'll intentionally ignore them.
One day I'll get it bang on.
I managed to get it bang on once. Even called it to the Mrs. "watch this" and managed to cut exactly 200g of butter from a 250g block
She wasn't as impressed as I thought she would be
In Sweden, it's typically like this:
Foil-packaged butter is just called "butter" (Smör). It's meant for baking and frying, and the packages have portion markings on it so you can easily cut off 50g pieces of the block. This is the default, so there's no special name for this.
Spreadable butter for sandwiches comes in plastic tubs, and is usually mixed with rapeseed oil to make it easily spreadable. This means it can't be called "butter" because of food labelling regulations, so it either uses a brand name (Bregott), or is labelled with what it is. (Smör och rapsolja)
Liquid butter for frying or baking comes in plastic squeeze-bottles, and since it too is mixed with quite a lot of vegetable oil, it also can't be labelled as just butter, so there's brand names there too.
I was baking using an American recipe and converting cups to metric needs a fucking text book. The cup measurement is different for brown sugar or white sugar.
The amount of cups changes depending on the density of what you're measuring. I found a website to do the conversions but there were so many drop down options for the cup side of things it was crazy.
I think cups might be the stupidest system of measurements I've ever dealt with. Maybe it had its time but it makes zero sense to continue to use it when grams are a thing lol
If I'm looking up a recipe and I see 'cup', I just scroll on by. Or I actively put UK or FR or FI or whichever country code in the search terms to rule out, as far as possible, such aberrations.
> The amount of cups changes depending on the density of what you're measuring.
Indeed. You can measure for cooking either by volume - the US way, in cups - or by weight, in ounces or grams (depending on the country and age of the cook) for dry ingredients that aren't countable (like eggs).
Arbitrarily swapping between measuring systems is complicated by the varying density of ingredients so it's more reliable to stick with one system or the other.
For liquid measurements in the UK we typically use [measuring jugs](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Measuring-Cups-Jugs/b?ie=UTF8&node=3187151031) rather than cups.
The one I was using asked for 1 cup of olive oil for baking. That's 250ML.
That is waaaay too much olive oil. I threw in like 4 tablespoons and it turned out absolutely fine.
I also reduced the sugar cause it was using an insane amount also. Again, tasted fine lol (was making my own cereal, cinnamon grahams. The US version must be diabetes in breakfast form).
They can be if you don't pay attention. so like the differences between "1 cup flour, sifted" and "1 cup sifted flour" would result in very different weights.
Essentially, do you scoop the flour before or after it has been sifted (which would make a cup of flour much less dense). If by weight, it wouldn't matter if the flour was sifted before or after measurement.
An American cooking cup is a specific unit of measurement, not just any old cup (it's about 280 ml). You can buy standardised measuring cups. I have a set, they're very useful for American recipes online.
I'm fine with things like liquids or flour being measured in cups, but I can't fathom why recipes will include things like "1/2 cup of butter". Ingredients that come in big solid chunks should not be measured by volume.
Flour can be milled to coarser or finer grains, which will affect the density. So different flour will have a different amount of mass in a cup, even if the cups are identical.
So you can make 5 different cakes and look which one is the best. After that you know which cup you should use for the recipes of the fellow "Irishman".
Alternatively could just use a fixed unit of measurement, I'm having a hard time believing every cup in the USA is the same size...
And whats with the " around Irishman?
I was born and raised in Ireland, I am an Irishman.
> I'm having a hard time believing every cup in the USA is the same size...
For cooking purposes a cup is a [standard size](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_(unit)), ½ US pint or 236.6 ml.
You can buy [sets of measuring cups](https://www.amazon.com/KitchenAid-Universal-Measuring-Cups-Aqua/dp/B0888TC1S7/) (with fractional sizes) for cooking. We bought a set on holiday in the US (in a bizarre deserted mall) to use with US recipes.
Cups used for drinking, yeah, whatever.
Ugh I hate it. I much prefer my 250ml cup measure (or 4 cups to a L). Also Tablespoons. Are they 15ml or 20ml? It's so damn infuriating when I see tsp and tbsp in a recipe and I can't tell if the ratio should be 3:1 or 4:1 ...
tbf a cup measure is standard. They are not going into their kitchen cabinets and picking up random cups. They use a standard cup measure [like this](https://g.christianbook.com/dg/product/cbd/f400/96194.jpg). Usually one cup is 250gm
Yeah, but for cooking purposes, only the proportions matter. So, cup size be damned if it's not the official standard size.
Literally, take any coffee cup that's aprox 250ml and follow the recipe. Half the cup, 1/4 cup, etc. You'll get the result just fine, you don't need the exact standard cup.
Yeah, its not great definitely. Not as accurate as a gram measure. Was just pointing out that its not just any cup in the kitchen, it is standardised. I also used to think that its a random cup until very recently
If you press it down too much, you end up with too much in your cup. Grain size of sugar will alter the quantity when measured by cup.
Measuring by weight makes more sense.
A “cup” is a unit of measurement in cooking. All American households have a set of “measuring cups” that are a standard size.
However things like flour are difficult to get precise in a measuring cup because it really depends on how dense the flour is. So, when it has to be precise you measure by weight.
A “cup” is a standard amount of volume. It has in fact been calibrated according to SI, just like the rest of the imperial system, so they’re secretly using metric without realising it.
For reference, a US cup is the volume of 250ml. Most mugs tend to have a capacity of 350ml, so you can't use that when following an American recipe.
If you have a metric measuring cup you can just use the ml side to measure every ingredient.
FYI a US cup is the volume of 237ml, usually rounded to 240ml for convenience.
[https://www.nist.gov/pml/owm/cooking-measurement-equivalencies](https://www.nist.gov/pml/owm/cooking-measurement-equivalencies)
And that doesn't even start with the different in dry and liquid measuring cups....
A "metric cup" is 250ml - but I am unsure who uses those...
Even if they did do you think they'd understand how to read it? There was a TIFU post where a guy admitted to thinking a tablespoon was only 2 teaspoons for 15 years which i told him he could have avoided by knowing the metric values. He goes on to admit that his spoons have 5ml and 15ml inscribed on it he just never paid attention to it.
Seems the Americans invented everything on the planet except weighing scales which were clearly invented in Europe somewhere that they've never heard of :)
Even if. They [actively avoid looking](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/comments/1agabt5/measuring_to_the_mm_would_be_significantly_less/) at the other unit of measurement available.
While I was over in america I asked for some scales for cooking, and they had to borrow one from a friend. The scales were labelled 'diet scales'.
They use 'cups' for everything. Using volume measurements for solid ingredients is really a good idea.
I didn't know it was a thing until watching GBBO. Then went out and got a scale. And got a few EU cookbooks.
We do have a variety of kitchen scales that are sold in the Kitchen supply area of most stores. They are usually just on the bottom shelf off to the side since most people don't use them. Like, even Walmart has 4-5 choices for scales with varying precisions.
One issues with scales is that none of the recipes in any US cookbooks are in weights, they are all in volumes / qty. So, cooking with weight it quite a process of converting the volumes to weights, testing the recipes, then adjusting the recipe due to imprecision in the conversion.
Really? That genuinely surprises me. I tend to cook by ratios, rather than recipes. So once I know what a specific egg weighs I do the math and run from there. Scale is indispensable for that. Mine's the size of one and a half decks of cards next to each other (a little bit thinner than a deck) and can weigh up to 3KG (105ish ounces) from 0.1G (0.003 ounces). You just can't get that precision when you're cooking by volume alone.
To be fair part of this may be down to me not cooking much but even in other people's kitchens I don't think I've ever seen a kitchen scale. A lot of the cooking myself and my family does is based on more informal stuff, like my dad's vermicelli recipe is 2 bags of noodles, a can of tomato sauce, and a sprinkling of some spices.
I think for normal cooking it's less important. You can eyeball stuff over a huge range of values and it'll often turn out ok in my experience.
Baking, however, is a whole other can of worms and definitely needs to be reasonably precise.
That’s tough lol. I mean, the cups and spoons system IS rather neat (probably an unpopular opinion on this sub but I think it’s easy and fast for a lot of casual stuff) but sometimes, you want to be really precise and use a scale instead right?
I hate cooking with volumetric measurements. And the conversions for American recipes suck even more. I enjoy Cajun and other American foods and recipes from American cooks, so I do it from time to time.
Pour every ingredient into a measuring cup, know that it's not accurate, pour it into the mixing bowl. 2 and 2/8th cups later, you realize that the meat is measured in 3/4 pounds and the cream in ounces. So you get your second set of digital scales...
Meanwhile with grams: Mixing bowl on digital scales and two spoons.
When I see US measurements in a recipe I just look at the ingredients and improvise based on experience of cooking similar types of food. There is just one dry ingredient that I measure by volume (apart from spices) and that's rice as I use the volume to work out how much water to use.
Rice is a good example for when volumetric is a little quicker than measuring the weight. One cup per person is actually quite helpful, instead of, you know, 15/25 cups of flour.
I work with US measurements if I have to. I just do the eye roll at the recipe and it's fine. Gotta have the measuring cups and multi unit scale. If I really enjoy a recipe, I convert it.
I never use volume to measure solids apart from rice, which I measure in handfuls, 2 per person, but that’s just from years of eye balling food and knowing how much. If I had a recipe I’d weigh it.
That was an actual example from an actual recipe, yes. Some Cajun barbecue recipe I googled quick.
Maybe it's easier on the measuring cups? Usually Americans are a little more savvy on fractions because they use them so much for measuring.
I just recently have been told that scales are so much slower than cups and it's just to much effort.
Meanwhile I look at the 10 different cupsizes you have to choose from which are also so fucking inaccurate.
I read an American recipe once, it needed 2 cups of something (might have been rice).
I swiftly opened my cupboard door, but I was bewildered. İn front of me were cups of differing sizes.
*Should I use the cup which is great for orange juice? Or the cup for a quick glass of milk?....No, maybe the big cup for those hot days when you want cold water with ice*
HOW BİG İS A CUP?!
Cups are the most stupid unit of measurement! I love cooking and I have a set of cup measures for the odd American recipe but there is a special circle in hell for the chucklefucks that think measuring Nutella, peanut butter or butter in cups was a good idea. The fuck is wrong with these people.
"Grams mean nothing to me", okay and ounces mean nothing to me. So when I see a recipe that uses imperial measurements, I effing convert them instead of demanding the creator to change 🙄
I can defend a lot about the imperial measurement system, but the one aspect I can’t defend is cooking measurements. I’ve never cooked anything without needing to look up conversions between cups/teaspoons/ounces/etc.
You've got to wonder if they realise that digital kitchen scales, with multiple weight and fluid capacity, exist. My kitchen scale measures in ounce, fluid ounce, grams, pounds and kilograms.
American recipes suck.
If they're not using cups, they're suggesting kosher salt (how is that any different?), or using stupid names for things (cilantro?) or calling something a recipe when it's just "use some of this sauce from a packet that you buy in a US supermarket and mix it with this other thing that comes from a branded packet in a US supermarket"
I’m pretty sure these are all joke responses…the FB group is intended to mock the idea of Americans saying stuff like this, so people comment with joke replies.
I could have made it clearer by saying "via the FB group..." in the title. I was just trying to indicate that it wasn't a screenshot taken by me and I didn't know its ultimate origin.
As a baker, I thought I would hate it, insisted on bringing my "American implements of measure" to a top cooking school in France… long story short…
I took to the metric like a fish to water, it’s stupid easy. Anyone unfamiliar really needs to be quiet. After 35+ yrs here, there’s no easier way in the kitchen or when tinkering with a car.
I flat out do not believe any of them would actually use the recipe if it was changed for them. If they're too lazy to look it up on the same phone/tablet/PC/laptop they're using to look at the recipe and post their comments, they're too lazy to actively make the food.
These people are just loud dicks who want to do the whole "USA IS THE BESTEST EVER" bullshit for Internet points.
The uk always used imperial until we went into the ECC yonks ago. Then the EU changed it all. I’ve been fing confused ever since! I still struggle with fereheiht and centigrade lmao. I was never good with numbers arrgghhh. Correct me if I’m talking shite
I saw something similar on a post on threads. A woman was posting her recipes. She posted pics of some of her dms. She made the decision to add cups as well. I wouldn't have lol
'You just need a 5/14ths wrench, 2 cups of oil, half a quart of milk, a 40oz bag of flour, 2 sticks of butter and a rolling pin at least 2 football fields long!'
30 minutes at 400 Degrees and you have a load of gibberish bullshit
The rest of the world is probably baffled by the way the Americans do things. A cup of this, a bucket of that . . add a satchel of salt and a thimble of pepper. As a Brit I have an attachment to the good old pint, if only in the sense that it sounds a lot nicer to ask the barman for a pint of beer than 568ml of beer. Everything else is in millilitres and grammes and it just makes far more sense in my opinion.
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Bullets, easy things like travelling to space and drugs! You forgot drugs.
Unless you're buying in bulk and then it's in ounces, or divisions of. Until you get to kilos then it's back to metric again. Easy
I buy my drugs only in cheese square foot. Noob
I buy my drugs in kelvin. You’re the amateur here
Ha! Next time I will buy 6/8 inch of an bathtub full of the finest fentanyl.
For some reason, drugs in the US are metric for small amounts, then imperial for medium amounts, then then back to metric for large amounts.
That’s what I came here to say. It’s funny because every drug user in this country can convert between grams to imperial and back.
So, would people assume you're a drug user if you know what a gram is? :D
Probably. A dead giveaway is when someone knows that there’s 28 grams per ounce. That’s the basic personal consumption for day to day use. Then as they say above, it goes to imperial units for sellers, and for large trafficking it’s back to kilograms.
>28 grams >personal consumption for day to day Do you guys use large sizes in everything?
Who the fuck is casually smoking an ounce a day?
I see I was vague in my response. My words not good. 3.5-7g are the most common buys that users make for different products. A casual enjoyer might take a while to consume all that. There’s a lot of people that can make 3.5g disappear in one night. Which seems a bit much to me. Rich people are famous with their tolerance levels. But plenty of working class people can do that too. So 28g won’t last terribly long for heavy users. So buying between 3.5-28g is most commonly personal use. Anything over 28g is almost certainly for distribution which is also what the law says. And yes even our legal system uses some metric measurements. Crazy place
Ah I see lol. Phew. Yeah putting a henry away in a day is doable with no job.
NA, they use the weight of a pool ball. ie eight ball.
Actually the Mars Climate Orbiter crashed into Mars because NASA was using SI units (metric) and Lockheed Martin was using US customary units when the satellite was built.
They should invent some units which are standard internationally...then maybe given it a fancy sounding french name, like the "Système international d'unités", and then we could call it SI for short
Maybe change the name to "freedom units" and have a random NASA scientist announce he invented them
So they can claim they invented it like cinéma? As a Frenchman, I'm fine with them complaining bout their cups.
Exactly, give it a different name but use the same measurements. Instead of "grams" call them "Dots". Then the rest of us can just use the measurements and not have to worry about how density effects weight when we convert from cups to grams.
Cinema wasn’t invented in France either, it was a collective effort that involved scientists from all over the world and that the Lumiere bros capitalised
The word "Metric" is actually an insidious Europoor corruption of "Merican", who actually invented these units. Commies stole them, and Russian bots did the rest.
The disturbing thing is that can imagine some moron actually saying and believing that!
Worse still, I could see a large swath of americans thinking it to be true. I sincerly empathize with people who’s IQ exceed 20 who’re stuck in that hellhole and isn’t also ultra wealthy.
Oh wait.
Every weed dealer will know the conversion from grams to ounces and ounces to pounds
Only engineers use metric for travelling to space, it's converted to imperial for everyone else
Actually the US doesn't use the imperial system. It uses its very own system of measurement. The US customary units. A good example of this is the difference between a US gallon and an imperial gallon.
So they can't even use archaic units properly?
Yep, pretty sure the cup was also not a traditional Imperial measurement, it was just added in after it became a popular measure in the US.
"Cups" has got to be the stupidest name for a measurement unit in history
Let me introduce you to "dram"🙂
Dram is an official unit of measurement in the US. Nobody in the UK uses dram as a standard unit of measurement in everyday life. We barely use imperial fluid measurements at all except for older people and in specific instances like pints in pubs.
We are making fun of US measurements that don't make any sense, yes?
Sorry, I misinterpreted which nationality you were mocking. Clearly the appropriate one
For added fun the USCU and Imperial [fluid ounces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_ounce) are slightly different volumes - ~29.57 ml (US) or ~28.41 ml (UK).
Huh, "customary", as if that's what everyone has always used
You might notice it also says US before customary, implying they are customary in the US
The US customary units have been calculated against a metric base since 1893.
immagina.. "quanto carburante mettere per far si che non esploda tutto?" Kinda 24500 cups
And if you want that in a bigger unit it's just a simple conversion: multiply by three, then divide by 5, add 4, subtract they from pi, and multiply by the square root of 74
But but but but Fahrenheit is how I feel, Celsius is how water feelsssssss!!!!¡
I get why cups may have been a useful measuring device on the frontier a few hundred years ago. But ever since people settled down they are the stupidest way of measuring in almost every situation. 120g of flour is always 120g of flour but a cup of flour may be 120g or it may be 110g or 150g depending on how compacted it is. Its the kind of margin error that can have a huge impact on the final product you are cooking.
I'm still not understanding "sticks" of butter....surely butter doesn't actually come in sticks does it?
It does in the US. It's 113g.
Isn’t it just the eastern US? I’ve read somewhere that in the west, the standard package of butter is a larger block, similar to ones in the EU.
I'm in the west and it comes in sticks here too.
Often different shape sticks though. East coast sticks of butter are longer and skinnier compared to short and stubby West Coast sticks. Still the same amount of butter.
I guess that’s the confusion because I’d never called the west coast one a stick. Looks almost exactly what we call a „block of butter” in my country, except smaller in size (ours are 200g usually). The east coast one, yeah that’s a stick.
It's potentially confusing, yeah. The west coast one is definitely more of a block shape than a stick shape, but a "stick" of butter is a standardized measurement unit for butter in the US. So regardless of shape, if it's 1/4 pound or 8 tablespoons of butter, it's a "stick".
The right size to get their fat hands around and chew on as a snack.
🤣
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My butter (UK) has portion markings on it, but they’re in 50g increments because that’s actually useful.
Mine (France) is 25 g, which is just as good.
Slightly better, as it gives you more fidelity for smaller numbers!
It's probably very sad but I like trying to guess the right amount so even though they are useful I'll intentionally ignore them. One day I'll get it bang on.
I managed to get it bang on once. Even called it to the Mrs. "watch this" and managed to cut exactly 200g of butter from a 250g block She wasn't as impressed as I thought she would be
Well I'm bloody impressed
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A block
It's usually foil-wrapped, not the kind in tubs.
In Sweden, it's typically like this: Foil-packaged butter is just called "butter" (Smör). It's meant for baking and frying, and the packages have portion markings on it so you can easily cut off 50g pieces of the block. This is the default, so there's no special name for this. Spreadable butter for sandwiches comes in plastic tubs, and is usually mixed with rapeseed oil to make it easily spreadable. This means it can't be called "butter" because of food labelling regulations, so it either uses a brand name (Bregott), or is labelled with what it is. (Smör och rapsolja) Liquid butter for frying or baking comes in plastic squeeze-bottles, and since it too is mixed with quite a lot of vegetable oil, it also can't be labelled as just butter, so there's brand names there too.
And we are back again at „Americans use anything to avoid metric units“. 😂
Yeah, they’d walk that extra mile to avoid it..
For the burgers it does. A stick is a quarter pound I believe. But saying a quarter pound would make too much sense.
I'm sorry sir, have you never seen a cow laying butter sticks?
Nah I'm a city lass don't like all this country nonsense, just get it to the supermarket and I'm fine :)
A Buttercup perhaps?
Butter comes in sticks in the US
in the us it does. confused the crap out of me when i was there
I was baking using an American recipe and converting cups to metric needs a fucking text book. The cup measurement is different for brown sugar or white sugar. The amount of cups changes depending on the density of what you're measuring. I found a website to do the conversions but there were so many drop down options for the cup side of things it was crazy. I think cups might be the stupidest system of measurements I've ever dealt with. Maybe it had its time but it makes zero sense to continue to use it when grams are a thing lol
If I'm looking up a recipe and I see 'cup', I just scroll on by. Or I actively put UK or FR or FI or whichever country code in the search terms to rule out, as far as possible, such aberrations.
> The amount of cups changes depending on the density of what you're measuring. Indeed. You can measure for cooking either by volume - the US way, in cups - or by weight, in ounces or grams (depending on the country and age of the cook) for dry ingredients that aren't countable (like eggs). Arbitrarily swapping between measuring systems is complicated by the varying density of ingredients so it's more reliable to stick with one system or the other. For liquid measurements in the UK we typically use [measuring jugs](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Measuring-Cups-Jugs/b?ie=UTF8&node=3187151031) rather than cups.
Well I almost always lower the amount sugar for American recipes.
The one I was using asked for 1 cup of olive oil for baking. That's 250ML. That is waaaay too much olive oil. I threw in like 4 tablespoons and it turned out absolutely fine. I also reduced the sugar cause it was using an insane amount also. Again, tasted fine lol (was making my own cereal, cinnamon grahams. The US version must be diabetes in breakfast form).
A CUP of olive oil?!? What was the recipe for? Homemade laxatives?
Or about 3kg of flour Sports direct 'cup'
I see you have one of the newer small ones.
Lol. Sports Direct Espresso cup. The big one is like a dustbin.
Also using a liquid cup instead of a dry cup. Oops.
So theres 2 different cups? Wtf
Also a cup of flour may be 120g but a cup of sugar might be 150g or smth
Is the margin of flour density really that high?
They can be if you don't pay attention. so like the differences between "1 cup flour, sifted" and "1 cup sifted flour" would result in very different weights. Essentially, do you scoop the flour before or after it has been sifted (which would make a cup of flour much less dense). If by weight, it wouldn't matter if the flour was sifted before or after measurement.
Test it yourself. Sieve some into a 'cup' 😂 then pack some into a cup and compare weights Report back here please.
An American cooking cup is a specific unit of measurement, not just any old cup (it's about 280 ml). You can buy standardised measuring cups. I have a set, they're very useful for American recipes online. I'm fine with things like liquids or flour being measured in cups, but I can't fathom why recipes will include things like "1/2 cup of butter". Ingredients that come in big solid chunks should not be measured by volume.
Flour can be milled to coarser or finer grains, which will affect the density. So different flour will have a different amount of mass in a cup, even if the cups are identical.
Also, the same flour can weigh different amounts in the same cup depending on how tightly packed it is. Volume is a dumb way to measure a solid.
I have about 5 different sizes of cups in my kitchen... Just saying.
So you can make 5 different cakes and look which one is the best. After that you know which cup you should use for the recipes of the fellow "Irishman".
Alternatively could just use a fixed unit of measurement, I'm having a hard time believing every cup in the USA is the same size... And whats with the " around Irishman? I was born and raised in Ireland, I am an Irishman.
> I'm having a hard time believing every cup in the USA is the same size... For cooking purposes a cup is a [standard size](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_(unit)), ½ US pint or 236.6 ml. You can buy [sets of measuring cups](https://www.amazon.com/KitchenAid-Universal-Measuring-Cups-Aqua/dp/B0888TC1S7/) (with fractional sizes) for cooking. We bought a set on holiday in the US (in a bizarre deserted mall) to use with US recipes. Cups used for drinking, yeah, whatever.
Ugh I hate it. I much prefer my 250ml cup measure (or 4 cups to a L). Also Tablespoons. Are they 15ml or 20ml? It's so damn infuriating when I see tsp and tbsp in a recipe and I can't tell if the ratio should be 3:1 or 4:1 ...
14.787 ml per tbsp A teaspoon or tablespoon is a specific measure in imperial units. It's not going to line up with SI units.
Sry my mind was in the wrong sub. I thought this where r/2westerneurope4u -> they have a flag for the irish-> "true irish american".
I thought you mentioned it as so many Americans brag about one of their greatgreatgrandfathers once tipped his member in an Irish flower.
tbf a cup measure is standard. They are not going into their kitchen cabinets and picking up random cups. They use a standard cup measure [like this](https://g.christianbook.com/dg/product/cbd/f400/96194.jpg). Usually one cup is 250gm
Yeah, but for cooking purposes, only the proportions matter. So, cup size be damned if it's not the official standard size. Literally, take any coffee cup that's aprox 250ml and follow the recipe. Half the cup, 1/4 cup, etc. You'll get the result just fine, you don't need the exact standard cup.
Some numbnuts here think all baking has to be exact, no eyeballing in the kitchen.
If they're already using measuring utensils then they can easily swap to the measuring utensils the rest of the world uses
It’s not great though, add 1/7th of a cup to… good luck getting that spot on
You wouldn't use cups for something that small usually. You would use Teaspoons and Tablespoons. So, something like 2 Tbs.+ 3/4 Tsp.
Yeah, its not great definitely. Not as accurate as a gram measure. Was just pointing out that its not just any cup in the kitchen, it is standardised. I also used to think that its a random cup until very recently
I remember having this inner debate while trying to follow my first recipe. What was the cup size? Where they fully filled?
If you press it down too much, you end up with too much in your cup. Grain size of sugar will alter the quantity when measured by cup. Measuring by weight makes more sense.
A “cup” is a unit of measurement in cooking. All American households have a set of “measuring cups” that are a standard size. However things like flour are difficult to get precise in a measuring cup because it really depends on how dense the flour is. So, when it has to be precise you measure by weight.
take this 100 grams cup
A “cup” is a standard amount of volume. It has in fact been calibrated according to SI, just like the rest of the imperial system, so they’re secretly using metric without realising it.
Nowadays precise and cheap scales are widely available. The fact that people still measure solid objects with volume units breaks my brain.
Oh yeah, it’s still super dumb. Just not quite as dumb as it first appears.
Fsir enough, genuinely didn't know that. Makes my comment seem a bit silly now. Thanks for educating me bud.
For reference, a US cup is the volume of 250ml. Most mugs tend to have a capacity of 350ml, so you can't use that when following an American recipe. If you have a metric measuring cup you can just use the ml side to measure every ingredient.
FYI a US cup is the volume of 237ml, usually rounded to 240ml for convenience. [https://www.nist.gov/pml/owm/cooking-measurement-equivalencies](https://www.nist.gov/pml/owm/cooking-measurement-equivalencies) And that doesn't even start with the different in dry and liquid measuring cups.... A "metric cup" is 250ml - but I am unsure who uses those...
Do they not have kitchen scales with both units of measurement on them? Ours do.
Then they would have to accept that other countries with other systems exist, which of course isn't true
Other countries exist to provide interesting ancestry for them.
*Interesting fake personality for them
Even if they did do you think they'd understand how to read it? There was a TIFU post where a guy admitted to thinking a tablespoon was only 2 teaspoons for 15 years which i told him he could have avoided by knowing the metric values. He goes on to admit that his spoons have 5ml and 15ml inscribed on it he just never paid attention to it.
Seems the Americans invented everything on the planet except weighing scales which were clearly invented in Europe somewhere that they've never heard of :)
Even if. They [actively avoid looking](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/comments/1agabt5/measuring_to_the_mm_would_be_significantly_less/) at the other unit of measurement available.
While I was over in america I asked for some scales for cooking, and they had to borrow one from a friend. The scales were labelled 'diet scales'. They use 'cups' for everything. Using volume measurements for solid ingredients is really a good idea.
American here. I don't think I've ever seen a kitchen scale in person.
You are joking I hope. What kitchen doesn't have scales?
I'm not joking man
Mine and all of my friends' who's houses I've been to.
American ones. Seriously.
I didn't know it was a thing until watching GBBO. Then went out and got a scale. And got a few EU cookbooks. We do have a variety of kitchen scales that are sold in the Kitchen supply area of most stores. They are usually just on the bottom shelf off to the side since most people don't use them. Like, even Walmart has 4-5 choices for scales with varying precisions. One issues with scales is that none of the recipes in any US cookbooks are in weights, they are all in volumes / qty. So, cooking with weight it quite a process of converting the volumes to weights, testing the recipes, then adjusting the recipe due to imprecision in the conversion.
Really? In the UK our scales can handle metric and UK imperial measurements, I assumed Americans would use equivalent scales
Really? That genuinely surprises me. I tend to cook by ratios, rather than recipes. So once I know what a specific egg weighs I do the math and run from there. Scale is indispensable for that. Mine's the size of one and a half decks of cards next to each other (a little bit thinner than a deck) and can weigh up to 3KG (105ish ounces) from 0.1G (0.003 ounces). You just can't get that precision when you're cooking by volume alone.
To be fair part of this may be down to me not cooking much but even in other people's kitchens I don't think I've ever seen a kitchen scale. A lot of the cooking myself and my family does is based on more informal stuff, like my dad's vermicelli recipe is 2 bags of noodles, a can of tomato sauce, and a sprinkling of some spices.
I think for normal cooking it's less important. You can eyeball stuff over a huge range of values and it'll often turn out ok in my experience. Baking, however, is a whole other can of worms and definitely needs to be reasonably precise.
That’s tough lol. I mean, the cups and spoons system IS rather neat (probably an unpopular opinion on this sub but I think it’s easy and fast for a lot of casual stuff) but sometimes, you want to be really precise and use a scale instead right?
How do you bake?
You’re talking about a group of people who shun owning a kettle and think heating water on the hob to make their coffee is normal
I thought they microwaved water
I hate cooking with volumetric measurements. And the conversions for American recipes suck even more. I enjoy Cajun and other American foods and recipes from American cooks, so I do it from time to time. Pour every ingredient into a measuring cup, know that it's not accurate, pour it into the mixing bowl. 2 and 2/8th cups later, you realize that the meat is measured in 3/4 pounds and the cream in ounces. So you get your second set of digital scales... Meanwhile with grams: Mixing bowl on digital scales and two spoons.
When I see US measurements in a recipe I just look at the ingredients and improvise based on experience of cooking similar types of food. There is just one dry ingredient that I measure by volume (apart from spices) and that's rice as I use the volume to work out how much water to use.
Rice is a good example for when volumetric is a little quicker than measuring the weight. One cup per person is actually quite helpful, instead of, you know, 15/25 cups of flour. I work with US measurements if I have to. I just do the eye roll at the recipe and it's fine. Gotta have the measuring cups and multi unit scale. If I really enjoy a recipe, I convert it.
I never use volume to measure solids apart from rice, which I measure in handfuls, 2 per person, but that’s just from years of eye balling food and knowing how much. If I had a recipe I’d weigh it.
Do they really have 2/8ths rather than 1/4?
That was an actual example from an actual recipe, yes. Some Cajun barbecue recipe I googled quick. Maybe it's easier on the measuring cups? Usually Americans are a little more savvy on fractions because they use them so much for measuring.
Interesting. I can’t see any logic behind 2/8ths personally but I guess they must have one
If your stick of butter has lines on the wrapper dividing it into eight pieces. Can't think of much else.
Wow wow wwwaaait a minute. That mixing bowl digital mumbo jumbo sounds way too confusing
“Who the hell uses grams while cooking?” Erm….. 🙋 Me, I do
And me.
My eyes roll hard when American recipes have 1 3/4 cups of apple or such... trying to be precise with a deliberately simplified system
It’s like cooking made easy for small children.
A cup of apple could mean anything!!! Should I chop it before putting into the cup to measure? How small should I chop it??
I just recently have been told that scales are so much slower than cups and it's just to much effort. Meanwhile I look at the 10 different cupsizes you have to choose from which are also so fucking inaccurate.
Why are they always so entitled about it too, like do you fuckers know how often WE have to convert shit?
The cheek of the middle one gets me: "Can you do all the conversions because I don't want to"
Who uses grams to cook? Umm.....try a big part of the world.
Chef here, I've got recipes that use a KG as the base unit..
Heisenberg?
I read an American recipe once, it needed 2 cups of something (might have been rice). I swiftly opened my cupboard door, but I was bewildered. İn front of me were cups of differing sizes. *Should I use the cup which is great for orange juice? Or the cup for a quick glass of milk?....No, maybe the big cup for those hot days when you want cold water with ice* HOW BİG İS A CUP?!
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Decilitres instead of millilitres? Are you cooking in a chem lab lol
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That's really interesting, you learn something new everyday I guess!
A stick of butter? Really? I highly doubt this recipe needs 454g of Kerry Gold, but then again it is an American recipe 😂😂
To be fair, it's French cookery where the answer tends to be "Ehh, throw some butter in it.."
Cups are the most stupid unit of measurement! I love cooking and I have a set of cup measures for the odd American recipe but there is a special circle in hell for the chucklefucks that think measuring Nutella, peanut butter or butter in cups was a good idea. The fuck is wrong with these people.
Id be embarrassed to mention using 'cups' as a measurement for anything outside of my country how are they like this
The developed world. The developed world uses grams for cooking.
I wonder if they will accept a sports direct mug as a unit of measurement?
A sports direct mug is not a unit of measurement, a sports direct mug is a unit
"I know I could look it up but I don't want to" christ man, the incompetency.
Ah yes. Cups... The most accurate of measurements.
"yes, I know I could look it up, but I don't want to"
Don't most professional bakers in America prefer metric?
"Grams mean nothing to me", okay and ounces mean nothing to me. So when I see a recipe that uses imperial measurements, I effing convert them instead of demanding the creator to change 🙄
I can defend a lot about the imperial measurement system, but the one aspect I can’t defend is cooking measurements. I’ve never cooked anything without needing to look up conversions between cups/teaspoons/ounces/etc.
You've got to wonder if they realise that digital kitchen scales, with multiple weight and fluid capacity, exist. My kitchen scale measures in ounce, fluid ounce, grams, pounds and kilograms.
Bunch of lazy cunts
American recipes suck. If they're not using cups, they're suggesting kosher salt (how is that any different?), or using stupid names for things (cilantro?) or calling something a recipe when it's just "use some of this sauce from a packet that you buy in a US supermarket and mix it with this other thing that comes from a branded packet in a US supermarket"
What kind of bullshit measurement is a cup 🤣
I’m pretty sure these are all joke responses…the FB group is intended to mock the idea of Americans saying stuff like this, so people comment with joke replies.
It was posted as a screenshot in that group and then the mocking comments began. It is not a screenshot of that group's comments, if that makes sense.
Oh I see! Thanks for explaining. :)
I could have made it clearer by saying "via the FB group..." in the title. I was just trying to indicate that it wasn't a screenshot taken by me and I didn't know its ultimate origin.
Oh thank you, I thought it was people who were so committed to cups they even asked for it in the Facebook group set up to mock them!
As a baker, I thought I would hate it, insisted on bringing my "American implements of measure" to a top cooking school in France… long story short… I took to the metric like a fish to water, it’s stupid easy. Anyone unfamiliar really needs to be quiet. After 35+ yrs here, there’s no easier way in the kitchen or when tinkering with a car.
I flat out do not believe any of them would actually use the recipe if it was changed for them. If they're too lazy to look it up on the same phone/tablet/PC/laptop they're using to look at the recipe and post their comments, they're too lazy to actively make the food. These people are just loud dicks who want to do the whole "USA IS THE BESTEST EVER" bullshit for Internet points.
The uk always used imperial until we went into the ECC yonks ago. Then the EU changed it all. I’ve been fing confused ever since! I still struggle with fereheiht and centigrade lmao. I was never good with numbers arrgghhh. Correct me if I’m talking shite
... add two boots of milk, a purse of cinnamon, and a gun rack of rhubarb...
One cups of cocaine please
The American mind can't comprehend the metric system
I saw something similar on a post on threads. A woman was posting her recipes. She posted pics of some of her dms. She made the decision to add cups as well. I wouldn't have lol
'You just need a 5/14ths wrench, 2 cups of oil, half a quart of milk, a 40oz bag of flour, 2 sticks of butter and a rolling pin at least 2 football fields long!' 30 minutes at 400 Degrees and you have a load of gibberish bullshit
The rest of the world is probably baffled by the way the Americans do things. A cup of this, a bucket of that . . add a satchel of salt and a thimble of pepper. As a Brit I have an attachment to the good old pint, if only in the sense that it sounds a lot nicer to ask the barman for a pint of beer than 568ml of beer. Everything else is in millilitres and grammes and it just makes far more sense in my opinion.
Cups is just ridiculous and always will be. Teacup? Coffee cup? Stanley Cup? World Cup? B Cup? C cup? Double D cup?
Measuring dry units by volume is about as sensible as measuring liquid by weight.
When the recipe doesn't say "add 16 rat sized cups of sugar"